Quick recommendations
You’re going to need a memory card for your Canon R50 to get out shooting.
If you just want to cut to the chase with some verified recommendations on which SD cards will work well in this camera, here you go:
- Type: SDXC / SDHC
- Video Speed Class: V30
- UHS Bus Interface Type: UHS-I
- Maximum Read Speed: 230 MB/s
- Storage Capacities: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
Check current price and availability at:
- Video Speed Class: V30
- UHS Bus Interface Type: UHS-I
- Maximum Read Speed: 150 MB/s
- Storage Capacities: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
Check current price and availability at:
- Type: SDXC
- Video Speed Class: V30
- UHS Bus Interface Type: UHS-I
- Maximum Read Speed: Up to 180 MB/s
- Storage Capacities: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB
Check current price and availability at:
Recommendations checked: August 2026
Any of these will work well in the Canon EOS R50. These SD cards meet the strict requirements of the R50’s 4K video features, have a strong track record of reliability in my testing, and are readily available.
You can’t go wrong with any of these. If you’re after more detail on why these are the right picks, I have much more below.
If you’re shopping for the Canon EOS R50 V instead, note that it’s a different camera: released in 2025 as a video-focused variant, it has a UHS-II card slot, so the UHS-I guidance on this page doesn’t apply to it.
Canon R50 memory card recommendations in detail
A memory card is an essential accessory for the Canon EOS R50. Without it, you’re not going to be able to take many photos or shoot much video.
There’s no user-accessible internal memory, and the camera doesn’t come with a memory card as standard. Somewhat unhelpfully, Canon buries this advice in the manual: “A card is not included. Please purchase it separately.”
Some retailers put together bundles of the camera with some accessories. But unless you get one of those, you’re probably going to have to pick up a memory card separately. Or maybe the card you already have is too small, and you find it filling up too quickly. You don’t want to run out of space when you’re on a trip, so you may want something bigger with larger storage capacity.
So which card should you get?
That’s why I’ve put this post together. Hopefully, it’ll save you some time searching, so you can get out shooting sooner and taking full advantage of all the features of your new camera rather than spending your time searching the web and trying to make sense of cryptic technical codes.
I’ve been buying and testing numerous SD cards for several years and have put many of the most popular SD cards on the market through their paces. You can find my main SD card tests here, and I have a lot more information on this site about SD cards and other memory cards.
Canon R50 SD card compatibility & requirements
The Canon EOS R50 has a single UHS-I SD card slot, and it’s compatible with SDXC, SDHC, and SD cards.
The Canon EOS R50 is a mirrorless camera with a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor. It uses a CMOS sensor, runs the data through a DIGIC X image processor, and when shooting at the largest setting, the images come out at 6000 x 4000 pixels.
The R50 can shoot 4K30 video, but its maximum bitrate (120 Mbps, or 170 Mbps with HDR PQ) is not especially demanding compared to some of Canon’s higher models.
The upshot of that is that you don’t need the fastest and most expensive memory card. Canon does provide some guidance on memory card speeds, which is more helpful than not. But it’s still not very specific. And it refers to an older speed rating system than the one found on many current cards.
In general, to be able to use all of the camera’s features, including 4K video recording, look for an SD card carrying the UHS-I and V30 codes.
UHS-I vs. UHS-II: Don’t overspend
These refer to two different things. The UHS-I refers to the type of interface. Most SD cards on the market currently are either UHS-I or UHS-II. The system is designed to roll back gracefully, so it’s possible to use a UHS-II card in the R50 and it will work just fine.
But because the R50 has a UHS-I slot, you won’t get the extra speed benefits of UHS-II. It’ll work, but there’s no benefit in the camera, and you will pay more for a UHS-II SD card.
In short, it’s just not necessary to pay the higher price for a UHS-II card when the R50 can only take advantage of UHS-I.
Why V30 matters
The V30 refers to the speed of the memory card. More specifically, it refers to how quickly it can write the type of data stream that is relevant to shooting video. If you never plan to record with the 4K setting, you can actually get away with a slower SD card. But if your card is too slow for the shooting mode, you can end up with dropped frames, errors, or even lockups.
So it makes more sense to me to get an SD card that lets you use all of your camera’s features, not just some. And V30 cards are readily available and cost-effective now, so you won’t have any trouble finding one at a good price.
Card speed doesn’t change how fast the R50 shoots, either. Canon rates it at 12 frames per second with the electronic first-curtain shutter and 15 frames per second with the electronic shutter, and those numbers are the same whatever card is in the slot. Where a faster UHS-I card helps is after the burst: the buffer empties sooner, so you’re ready to shoot again with less waiting.
The R50 shoots 4K30 video with a maximum video bitrate of around 120Mbps.
For capacity, a 128GB card is a comfortable choice for most R50 owners: it holds thousands of RAW stills or, at the 4K30 IPB bitrate, well over an hour of 4K video. If you shoot long video sessions or don’t want to swap cards often, sizing up to 256GB is a reasonable step, and the R50 has no problem with cards up to 1TB or larger.
Canon EOS R50 instruction manual guidance
The Canon R50’s instruction manual isn’t all that helpful in providing guidance on what memory cards work well.
There is a section titled “Compatible Cards,” but it doesn’t really help much. This is it:
Elsewhere, it does provide more granular guidance in terms of speed requirements when shooting video. But it’s referring to an older rating system (speed classes of 4, 6, and 10, which are no longer particularly relevant or helpful).
That doesn’t clear much up at all. And it’s certainly not very practical.
So what I’m aiming to do here is provide some practical recommendations on which SD cards to get for the Canon EOS R50 so you can spend less time searching online and more time out shooting.
These cards are all rated V30 and work well in a very wide variety of cameras, with good versatility for shooting photos and 4K video.
My emphasis here is on cards that meet these criteria:
- They're fast enough for all the features of this camera.
- They're from a reputable and reliable brand, so you can count on them working well.
- They're readily available at major retailers, so you should be able to find them without much trouble.
- They're good value for money, so you're not paying too much for a card that is more than your camera can take full advantage of.
If you want to use a faster, fancier card, you can, but you won't see any extra benefit in doing so while you're operating the camera (but you might see some faster speeds when downloading the photos to a computer, depending on your computer and memory card reader combination). And, as always, I recommend buying from a major retailer to minimize the chances of getting burned with a counterfeit memory card.
SanDisk Extreme V30 UHS-I
- Type: SDXC / SDHC
- Video Speed Class: V30
- UHS Bus Interface Type: UHS-I
- Maximum Read Speed: 230 MB/s
- Storage Capacities: 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
Check current price and availability at:
SanDisk's Extreme range are good bets for many cameras, and that's true here too. SanDisk has faster ranges, like the Extreme Pro line, but this Extreme line is both quick enough for most cameras and usually less expensive than those faster cards.
One thing to note with SanDisk cards is that they recycle their model names. So you can find Extreme cards that are older and slower. You'll probably find those older versions work just fine — it really depends how far back you go. I've used many SanDisk Extreme cards over the years in many different cameras and have found them to be very reliable. They're also often good value, and you can sometimes find them sold in 2-packs (it's always good to have a spare on hand!).
Lexar High-Performance 800x PRO BLUE Series V30 UHS-I
- Video Speed Class: V30
- UHS Bus Interface Type: UHS-I
- Maximum Read Speed: 150 MB/s
- Storage Capacities: 64GB, 128GB, 256GB
Check current price and availability at:
The Lexar 800x Pro range is a relatively new model that replaces the old 633x cards that were mainstays of Lexar's SD cards for a long time. This newer V30 card is still a good combination of speed, reliability, and value, and you can often find them in multipacks to have spares on hand.
Delkin Devices ADVANTAGE V30 UHS-I SDXC (180 MB/s)
- Type: SDXC
- Video Speed Class: V30
- UHS Bus Interface Type: UHS-I
- Maximum Read Speed: Up to 180 MB/s
- Storage Capacities: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB
Check current price and availability at:
Delkin Devices have recently come out with a range of new SD cards of varying speeds and specs. This is one of their mid-range cards that is rated for V30 video recording speeds. This newer version is rated for read speeds of up to 180 MB/s (the older version of the Advantage maxxed out at 90 MB/s).
Nextorage Classic V30 UHS-I SDXC Card
- Type: SDXC
- Video Speed Class: V30
- UHS Bus Interface Type: UHS-I
- Maximum Read Speed: Up to 200 MB/s
- Storage Capacities: 128GB, 256GB, 512GB
Check current price and availability at:
Japanese brand Nextorage makes excellent memory cards, although they're not always easy to find in stores in the US. But if you can find them, in my experience they're a very good bet. This is their basic (or "Classic") model, rated for V30.
Recommendations checked: August 2026
Making sense of SD card specifications
There are several types of SD card, and you’ll find a range of different acronyms and codes on them. Here’s a quick overview of what to look for.
SDHC vs. SDXC
Most of the cards you’ll see available now have either SDHC or SDXC printed on them. The Canon EOS R50 will work with both SDHC and SDXC cards (and, for that matter, just plain SD cards, but they’re hard to find these days and have impractically small storage capacities).
These aren’t performance categories, as such. An SDXC card isn’t necessarily any faster than an SDHC card, and vice versa. But they’re important for compatibility with the camera and also in terms of storage capacity.
They’re categories assigned by the SD Association, which is the organization that oversees and develops the standards for SD and microSD cards. The difference between those two specifications is in the filesystem they’re formatted with — the SDHC specification uses FAT32 formatting, while the SDXC specification uses exFAT — but when it comes to buying memory cards, the practical difference is that cards 32GB and smaller will be labeled SDHC and cards 64GB and larger will be labeled SDXC.
And in the Canon R50, that has one important practical consideration beyond the obvious one of storage size. The R50 detects whether the card is exFAT or FAT32. For cards that are formatted with FAT32, it will break up long videos and save them into 4GB chunks — 4GB is the largest filesize supported by FAT32. You’ll then need to join them back together in post-processing. But exFAT can support files exponentially larger. So when using an SDXC card formatted with exFAT, the camera won’t need to break up the files and will instead save it as a single uninterrupted file.
UHS-I vs. UHS-II
The current generations of SD cards also have UHS-I or UHS-II on them (or often just an I or II). This refers to the type of interface that’s used to connect to the cards. It stands for ultra-high-speed bus.
Aside from whatever is printed on the card or packaging, you can tell UHS-I and UHS-II cards apart just by looking at them. UHS-I cards have a single row of contacts on the back. UHS-II cards have a second row of contacts.
The Canon EOS R50 doesn’t have a UHS-II interface, so, as a practical matter, there’s no benefit to using UHS-II cards in it (but it’s perfectly fine to do so if you already have a UHS-II card on hand).
There is one place a UHS-II card still pays off, and it’s not in the camera. If you already own UHS-II cards and a UHS-II card reader, the second row of contacts is used when you copy files to your computer, so offloading a full card can be much quicker. The camera itself won’t write any faster, but the transfer at the end of the day will be.
What are video speed classes & why should you care?
The SD Association has come out with various rating systems over the years. Because recording high-resolution video is often the most demanding operation, it’s known as a video speed class rating system.
As a practical matter in the Canon EOS R50, cards that are rated in the V30 Video Speed Class should be fast enough.
SD cards with a V90 rating will also work — the system is designed to be backward compatible like that — but they’re overkill for the Canon R50, and it’s really not worth paying the higher prices for them in this case.
So why is it worth getting a good memory card?
A better memory card won’t help you take better photos or improve image quality. But it can let you take advantage of all of the camera’s features.
A card that’s not fast enough to keep up with the camera can cause issues like locking up, dropping frames, and overheating. And, frankly, there are junk cards on the market that you want to steer clear of.
How to format SD cards
When you buy a new SD card, you should format it before use and then regularly after that. If you’re formatting a card that you’ve already been using, make sure that you’ve downloaded any photos and videos you want to keep, because formatting deletes everything on the card.
How to format SD cards in the Canon EOS R50
It is best practice to always format memory cards in the camera that you’ll be using them in. That sets the card up with the filesystem, folder hierarchy, and, in some cameras, a database file, so that the card is just how the camera expects. That greatly reduces the risk of unexpected errors and unpleasant surprises.
On the Canon EOS R50, you can find the format function under:
Wrench icon > Format CardThe R50 also has a low-level format function. It’s sometimes known as a full format, and it’s a more thorough and secure process, but it also takes significantly longer. If you’re disposing of the SD card or lending the camera to someone else, it provides a safer option that vastly reduces the chances that anyone could recover anything from it. More practically, though, it’s a good troubleshooting step if your memory card seems to be slowing or glitching.
